One day in 1852 in British-ruled India, a young man burst into an office in the northern Dehra Dun hill town and announced to his boss: "Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world!"s After four long and arduous years of unscrambling mathematical data, Radhanath Sickdhar had managed to find out the height of Peak XV, an icy peak in the Himalayas. The mountain - later christened Mount Everest after Sir George > Everest, the surveyor general of India - stood at 29,002 feet (8,840 metres). Sickdhar's feat, unknown to many Indians, is now part of the Great Arc Exhibition in London's vibrant Brick Lane. The Indian Government-sponsored exhibition celebrates 200 years of the mapping of the Indian subcontinent. |